Veloso recruiter admits ties with int’l drug syndicates

(Update)

THE recruiter of Mary Jane Veloso has admitted that she has ties with international drug syndicates.

In her accounts given to authorities, Ma. Cristina Sergio alias Mary Christine Gulles Pasadilla said she had several co-conspirators in Manila, Hong Kong and Malaysia.

She gave the statement to the Philippine National Police (PNP) and the National Bureau of Investigation-Anti Human Trafficking Division (NBI-AHTRAD).

Sergio mentioned in her statement that when she was in Hong Kong, her contacts offered her $5,000 to bring drugs to the Ivory Coast.

She added that the person named “Ike” who gave Veloso the luggage containing 2.6 kilograms of heroin is a Nigerian national.

Earlier, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said Sergio, along with her partner Julius Lacanilao, started working as drug couriers.

Sergio said she and Lacanilao started working as drug mules in 2010 for a West African Drug Syndicate cell in Malaysia headed by a Nigerian national.

Authorities also gathered information that Lacanilao is known as “Supremo” in the underworld drug community.

Veloso had said that it was Lacanilao who introduced her to Sergio who then promised her a job in Malaysia.

In 2010, Sergio and Veloso went to Malaysia to find a job. Veloso, in her affidavit, said she met “Ike” in Malaysia who gave her the luggage which  she used when she traveled to Indonesia to do an errand for Sergio.

Upon arriving in Indonesia, Veloso was arrested and was eventually convicted and sentenced to death.

She was supposed to be executed last April 29 but the Indonesian government gave her a reprieve.